Chapter Two

Mobile Radio Channel Modelling & Mitigations

2.1 Wireless Channel Models and Signal Propagations

Small Scale Fading and Multipath

By : Eshetu T.
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Objective of the Chapter
 In cellular system, calls are occasionally disconnected

 Possible cause: Rapid fluctuation of radio signal’s amplitude

over a short time period or travel distance
Reasons for wireless channels to become selective and dispersive
both in frequency and time
Sources of signal fluctuation: multipath propagation and mobility
Techniques to minimize or modify propagation loss.
 To understand how physical parameters such as carrier frequency,
mobile speed, bandwidth, delay spread impact wireless channel .
Lecture Outlines
 Introduction

 Parameters of the Mobile Radio Channel

 Impulse Response Model of the Wireless Channel

 Categorization of the Fading Channel

 Summery

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 Introduction to Wireless Channels
Electromagnetic (EM) signal can transmit through:

 A guided medium or

 An unguided medium.

 Guided mediums such as coaxial cables and fiber optic cables

are far less hostile for the information carrying EM signal than
the wireless or the unguided medium.

 It presents limited challenges and conditions which are

unique for this kind of transmissions.

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 As the signal travels through the wireless channel, it undergoes
many kinds of propagation effects such as reflection, diffraction
and scattering due to the presence of buildings, mountains and
other such obstructions.
 Reflection: occurs when the EM waves impinge on objects
which has very large dimension as compared to the wavelength of
the wave.
 Diffraction: occurs when the wave interacts with a surface
having sharp irregularities.
 Scattering: Occurs when the medium through which the wave

is travelling contains objects which are much smaller than the

wavelength of the EM wave. 5
 These varied phenomena's lead to large scale and small
scale propagation losses.

 Hence unlike wired channels that are stationary and

predictable, radio channels are extremely random and time
varying.

 Even the speed of motion impacts how rapidly the signal

level fades as a mobile terminal moves in space.

 Due to the inherent randomness associated with such

channels they are best described with the help of
statistical models.

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 We have two types of wireless channel models:

Large Scale Path Loss Models: Predicts the mean signal strength
for arbitrary transmitter-receiver distances.
 They predict the average signal strength for large Tx-Rx
separations, typically for hundreds of kilometers.
 Time constants associated with variations are very long as
the mobile moves, many seconds or minutes.
 Useful in estimating the coverage area of an antenna.
 More important for cell site planning.

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Small Scale Fading Models: describes the signal strength variation in
close spatial proximity to a particular location.
 Characterize the rapid fluctuations of the received signal strength.

 Over very short travel distances (a few wavelengths) or Over

 very short time durations (in the order of seconds).
 The received power may vary by 30-40 dB when the received is
moved by fraction of a wavelength.

 This is because the received signal is the sum of many

contributions (the phases are random) coming from different
directions

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 Example: Small scale and large scale fading
Signal variations in an indoor radio communication system

 Signal fades rapidly as the receiver moves

 By more than 20
dBm
 However, the average signal

decays much more slowly

with distance (smoothed line)

 Depends on terrain and obstructions.

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Small Scale Fading and Multipath
 Small scale fading (simply fading) describes rapid fluctuation
of amplitudes, phases, or multipath delays of a radio signal over:
 Short period of time or
 Small travel distances
 It is more severe than the large-scale path loss.
 Fading is caused by multipath (self) interference b/n two or more
version of the transmit signal which arrives at the receiver at
slightly different times.
Multipath Waves: Two or more versions of a transmitted signal.
 Multipath signals, if arrive at slightly different times, may combine at
the receiver antenna distractively that causes signal fluctuation.
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 Representation of multipath wireless propagation

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Thus fading describes the rapid fluctuation of amplitudes, phases
and multipath delays of the radio signal over a short period of time.

The most important effects of this multipath fading are:

 Envelope fading: rapid change in signal strength over a small

travel distance or time interval.

 Time Dispersion: Echo's caused by multipath propagation delays

 Frequency Dispersion: Random frequency modulation due to

varying Doppler shifts on different multipath signals.

 This Doppler shift is caused by the mobility of mobile which

cause an apparent shift in frequency.

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 Factors that influence small scale fading:

1. Multipath Propagation: due to the presence of reflecting

objects and scaterers.

 Multiple version of the signal arrives at the receiver with

different amplitude and time delays
 Relevant terms: Delay spread and coherence bandwidth
2. Speed of Mobile: due to the relative motion of the base station,
mobile station, and the surrounding environment.

 Causes Doppler shift (“+” or “-”) at each multipath component

 Results in random frequency modulation or apparent shift in

Frequency.
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 A receiver moving at high speed can pass through several fades in
small period of time

 Causes time-varying Doppler shift on the multipath components

 If the surrounding objects move at a greater rate than the mobile, then
this effect dominates the small-scale fading and vice versa

 The term coherence time determines how “static” the channel is and
depends on the Doppler shift,e.g., room environment ,outdoor, urban,
…

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 3. The bandwidth of the signal: causes frequency selectivity.
 The channel bandwidth can be quantified by the term coherence
bandwidth, Bc

 Coherence bandwidth measures the maximum frequency difference

for which signals are still strongly correlated in amplitude.
 If BW of the signal is greater than the coherence bandwidth, the received
signal will be distorted (filtered) in frequency.
• However, the signal strength will not fade much over a local area
(i.e., small-scale fading will not be significant)

 If the transmitted signal has a narrow bandwidth as compared to the channel,

signal will not be distorted in frequency.

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 Parameters of the Mobile Radio Channel
 Wireless propagations are mostly governed by a number of

unpredictable factors.

 So, it is preferred to characterise the wireless channel from a

statistical point of view using some fundamental parameters.

 Here, we will see these fundamental parameters and their impacts

on wireless communication

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1. Doppler Shift: is the change in frequency of a wave for an
observer moving relative to the source of the wave.

 Caused by movement of Tx, Rx, and environment

 Results multiplicative in time rendering the channel impulse

response linear time variant (LTV).

 For the mobile in the next figure, phase change in the received
signal due to path difference is

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 The apparent change in frequency
Remote Source

 This is Doppler spreading

 Which increase or decrease
the signal frequency at Rx
Note that if: = Spatial angle b/n the
direction of motion of
= 0 then fD is positive the mobile and
 Apparent received frequency: fa= fs+ fD direction of arrival
= π then fD is negative
 Apparent received frequency: fa= fs- fD
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 = π/2, then fD is zero
 Apparent received frequency: fa= fs

 Hence, when a wave source (transmitter) and/or a receiver is/are

moving, the frequency of the received signal will not be the same
as that of the transmitted signal.

 When they are moving towards each other, the frequency

of the received signal is higher than the source

 When they are moving opposite to each other, the received

frequency decreases.

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2. Time Dispersive Parameters
 The wireless channel is fully described by its impulse
response model as:

Where:
= the time-varying attenuation or power delay profile
= phase shift of the channel
= propagation delay of the lth path
Np = number of multipath of the wireless propagation

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 Multipath channel parameters that are used to characterise the

time dispersive channel such as: mean excess delay, RMS delay

spread, maximum excess delay and coherence BW.

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 The Mean Excess Delay (τ ): is the first moment of the
power delay profile and is defined as

Where is the average power of the delay profiles in linear power

units and is the relative delay in seconds.

 The RMS Delay Spread (Ϭτ ): is the square root of the second

central moment of the power delay profile and is given by

Where:

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 These delays are measured relative to the first detectable signal

arriving at the receiver at τ0 = 0

 Typical v a l u e s o f R M S d e l a y s p r e a d a r e o n t h e

o r d e r o f microseconds in outdoor mobile radio channels and

on the order of nanoseconds in indoor mobile radio channels.

 Note that: the RMS delay spread and mean excess delay
are defined from a single power delay profile which is the
temporal or spatial average of consecutive impulse response
measurements collected and averaged over a local area.

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 The maximum excess delay (XdB): the time delay during

which multipath energy falls to XdB below the maximum τx-τ0

whe r e τ0 i s the first arrival signal and τx i s the maximum

signal point at which the multipath component is XdB of
the strongest arrival signal.
 The value of τX is sometimes called the excess delay spread

of a power delay profile, but in all cases it must be specified

with a threshold that relates the multipath noise floor to the
maximum received multipath component.

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 Coherence Bandwidth(Bc): is a statistical measure of the

range of frequencies over which the channel can be considered

as “flat”.

 Flat channel is a channel which passes all spectral

components with approximately equal gain and linear phase.

 While the delay spread is a natural phenomenon caused by

reflected and scattered propagation paths in the radio
channel, the coherence bandwidth is defined based on the
relation derived from the RMS delay spread.

 The range of frequencies over which two frequency

components have a strong potential for amplitude correlation.
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 Two sinusoids with frequency separation greater than BC
are affected differently
 If the coherence bandwidth is defined as the bandwidth
over which the frequency correlation function is 0.9.

 If the coherence bandwidth is defined as the bandwidth

over which the frequency correlation function is 0.5

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 The Coherence Time(Tc):
 Delay spread and coherence bandwidth are parameters which
describe the time dispersive nature of the wireless channel.
 But, they do not offer information about the time varying nature
of the channel caused by either relative motion between the mobile
and base station, or by movement of objects in the channel.
 Doppler spread and coherence time are parameters which
describe the time varying nature of the channel in a small-scale
region.
 Doppler spread BD is a measure of the spectral broadening
caused by the time rate of change of the mobile radio channel and
it is the range of frequencies over which the received Doppler
spectrum is essentially nonzero.
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 Coherence time is the time domain dual of Doppler spread and
is used to characterize the time varying nature of the frequency
dispersiveness of the channel in the time domain.
 The Doppler spread and coherence time are inversely
proportional to one another as Tc=1/ fm.

 Coherence time is the time duration over which two

received signals have a strong potential for amplitude correlation
 If the reciprocal bandwidth of the baseband signal is greater
than the coherence time of the channel, then the channel will
change during the transmission of the baseband message, thus
causing distortion at the receiver.
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 If the coherence time is defined as the time over which the
time correlation function is above 0.5, then the coherence
time is approximately

 A popular rule of thumb for modem digital communications is

to define the coherence time as the geometric mean of the above
two equations as

 Generally, coherence time implies that two signals arriving

with a time separation greater than Tc are affected differently
by the channel.

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Impulse Response Model of the Wireless Channel
 Small-scale variations of a signal are related to the impulse

response of the mobile radio channel

 The impulse response is

 A wideband channel characterization

 Contains all information necessary to simulate or analyze

any type of channel
 A wireless channel can be modelled as a linear time
varying (LTV) filter
 The time variation is due to the receiver motion in space
 We use discrete-time impulse response model

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 Filtering is caused by the summation of amplitudes and

delays of multipath signals at any instant of time.

 In multipath channel, the received signal is the sum of

 Line-of-sight path component &

 All resolvable multipath components

 Hence the received low pass signal can be described by

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 Categorization of Small Scale Fading Channels
 Based on the parameters that we have seen before small

scale fading channels can be classified as:

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 Now the above diagram can described as

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Flat and Time Invariant Channels
 Here the channel could be regarded as invariant over
many signalling intervals.
So the channel impulse response

becomes independent of time as

The corresponding channel frequency response is

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Frequency Selective (Time Dispersive) Channel
 Here the arrival time of scattered multipath signals are

inevitably distinct.

 Whether these delays smear the transmitted signal depends

on the product of the signal bandwidth and the maximum

differential delay spread.
 A time dispersive (frequency-selective) channel and its effect
on narrow and broad band signals.

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 If the signal bandwidth is sufficiently narrow, the channel frequency
response within the signal bandwidth can be approximated as constant.

 A wireless channel is considered flat if the multipath delays are

indistinguishable relative to the symbol period:

 The most important problem of frequency selective fading is ISI and

can be mitigated by channel equalizer and adaptive modulation.

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Frequency Dispersive (Time Selective) Fading Channel
 Caused by Doppler effects which causes the channel impulse
linear but time invariant.

 It causes two effects on the received signal:

 Signal variation over time

 Broadening signal spectrum

 The wireless channel is time selective (flat fading ) or frequency

dispersive iff Tc ≤ Ts, where as the channel is time invariant
( slow fading) iff Tc ≥ Ts.

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  Here the system results a SNR degradation: ρ(t) may be drop to
very low values (deep fades) which leads to poor SNR that
vulnerable to AWGN.

 Which can be mitigated by

 Channel Coding
 Interleaving
 Diversity techniques

 A frequency dispersive (time-selective) channel and its effect on short

and long symbols.
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Summery
 Small-scale fading composed of multipath & Doppler spread

 Multipath delay spread leads to time dispersion and

frequency selective fading

 Doppler spread leads to frequency dispersion and time

selective fading (the channel becomes time varying)

 Envelope Fading: affects the signal strength and therefore fading

margin in link budget calculation of the wireless system.

 Power control and spatial diversity: techniques are

among the most effective means to cope with envelope
fading.
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 Frequency Selective Fading: alters the signal waveform and

therefore the detection performance.

 Channel equalization is utilized to compensate the effect.

By transferring a broadband signal into parallel narrowband

streams (Multicarrier systems)

 Time Selective Fading: smears the signal spectrum and

introduces variation too fast for power control.

 Time interleaving and diversity techniques are most

effective means of coping with time-selective fading

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